Introduction from Director Kelly Jordan-Sciutto, PhD
Reflections on the importance of science communication and a message of gratitude to the BGS community

Welcome to the Winter 2020 issue of The Dish. In the midst of a holiday season unlike any other in living memory, I appreciate having this opportunity to tell you about what BGS is up to — and how these turbulent times underscore the importance of all scientific work.

I’d like to convey my deepest appreciation and gratitude to the BGS staff, faculty, and students who have kept our research and education ventures moving forward while also keeping everybody safe during the pandemic. We have seen a 0% positive test rate for students who returned to campus and zero cases of virus transmission in the laboratory space. Everybody has stepped up in wonderful and admirable ways, making the necessary sacrifices and working remotely when possible to help protect their community. Under the worst of circumstances, I have truly seen the best of us.

The deployment of COVID-19 vaccines has begun, and with them has come a glimmer of hope — a light at the end of the tunnel. These vaccines are built upon the groundbreaking work done in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s by Penn’s own mRNA research pioneers Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, and Katalin Karikó, PhD, and we simply could not be more proud. Should these vaccines allow us to turn the tide against the pandemic, we will one day look back on 2020 as a year of enormous scientific achievement. The scientific community has dedicated so much time and attention to this cause, and the results are incredible: Vaccine development that would normally take years has instead taken months.

And while we praise the science that went into the creation of these vaccines, we must also pay heed to everything else the science is telling us right now: We are not yet out of the woods, and we must continue to take precautions to reduce the spread of the virus. Some of those precautions are likely to extend well past the time when vaccines become widely available, but we must adhere to them and take the advice passed on to us from the scientific community.

The public response to the pandemic has shown us in stark terms the importance of science communication. More than ever before, students and young scientists must be provided with the training and education they need to not only continue raising the bar in scientific and medical research, but also to express that work and its importance in ways that are digestible to the lay public. Through this, the most brilliant scientific minds of these young generations can help influence public thought and policy toward evidence-based solutions.

This issue of The Dish showcases two brilliant minds who have placed themselves at the intersection of discovery and communication. Our alumni Q&A this month is with the founder of the Penn Science Diplomacy Group — which would go on to become the Penn Science Policy & Diplomacy Group — Enrique Lin-Shiao, PhD, GR’19, who now works in Dr. Jennifer Doudna’s Lab at UC Berkeley and has turned his attention to COVID-19 testing automation, greatly expanding his institution’s capacity to intake and process test kits. Current PSPDG President Erin K. Reagan, GR’23, is currently developing and testing vaccines for infectious diseases in the lab of Drew Weissman, MD, PhD. (Dr. Weissman’s work in mRNA research provided the backbone for the COVID-19 vaccines I mentioned above.)

I am deeply proud of our community, and your place in it. Thank you for your dedication. If you’d like to help us further that community and its contributions to a healthier, more educated future, please consider making a gift. And as always, please feel free to reach out to me at jordank@upenn.edu to discuss the work and direction of BGS — or story ideas you’d like to see for future issues of The Dish.

Thank you for everything, and please enjoy our Winter 2020 issue.

Kelly Jordan-Sciutto, PhD
Chair and Professor, Department of Pathology, University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine
Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Director, Biomedical Graduate Studies, Perelman School of Medicine

BGS Student Spotlight: Erin Reagan

Few fields have wielded as much influence over the discourse surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic as science communication and vaccine development. Erin K. Reagan, GR’23, member of the Gene Therapy and Vaccines Program in BGS’s Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group, current President of the Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Group (PSPDG), and researcher in the lab of Drew Weissman, MD, PhD — the scientist whose mRNA research in the ‘90s and early ‘00s led to the breakthroughs which paved the way for the two most successful COVID-19 vaccine candidates — has found herself at that very intersection.

A native of rural Pennsylvania, Reagan earned her BS in Biochemistry and Physics from Hofstra University. She’s currently studying the design and testing of Hepatitis C vaccines as a member of the laboratories of Katherine J. Bar, MD, and Drew Weissman, MD, PhD.

“It has been fascinating to work in the vaccine field here at Penn,” says Erin. “mRNA-based vaccines are a truly promising platform for future vaccine development. I always knew they would come into the spotlight at some point, but I did not expect it to come along quite so quickly.”

Erin’s interest in vaccine development dates back to her growing up with a father in the pharmaceutical industry. Motivated by the idea of making the world a better place through the development of a vaccine or medicine that reduces human hardship, she considers vaccine development to be a “natural outgrowth” of her interest in biomedical science and medical research.

To Erin, while of course the value of treatments cannot be overstated, the inherent issues of treatments — access, side effects, adherence, and recurrence, to name a few — make their development a less appealing field of study than that which would prevent an illness from taking hold in the first place.

“In addition, I find immunology to be endlessly fascinating,” she adds. “Vaccine design requires you to engage in a careful dance with our highly evolved immune system to ensure a protective outcome. It keeps you on your toes, and it’s very rewarding when you figure out the right steps.”

Becoming a Leader in Science Policy and Diplomacy

After working as a community organizer for a presidential campaign in 2016, Erin knew she was interested in policy — but did not know how those policies came together, or what role science played in their development.

Her opportunity to explore that arena would come two years later, when the PSPDG — then a small group — was in need of new leadership. Erin answered the call.

“Since then, we’ve built out a lot of programming in all three of our branches: Science Policy, Science Diplomacy, and Science Communication,” she says. “Most of our work focuses on training the next generation of scientists and engineers in how to interface more effectively with other parts of society like policymakers, diplomats, and the broader public.”

The work was always important, Erin notes, but that importance has “come into focus for everyone else since January of this year.” The work, she adds, is even more fulfilling now that its relevance surrounds her every day.

Like many other entities, the COVID-19 pandemic has driven the PSPDG into virtual programming. There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to the new approach — but the PSPDG has found ways to thrive. Members check in remotely from Alaska, California, Arizona, and the United Kingdom. The group has also been able to increase the reach of its programming.

For example, in October the group was able to schedule meetings with legislators and their staff for the purpose of sharing literature survey findings. Erin says that while such a meeting is normally limited to around six Penn students and eight legislators over the course of a single day, a virtual environment allowed the program to include 20 Penn undergrad, graduate, and postdoc trainees, as well as four graduate students from policy groups at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Rochester.

The result? More than 30 meetings spread across four days focused on federal and state legislatures. And the ripple effects of those meetings carry onward, Erin notes, because once those relationships are established it’s easier for their group to share data and information.

A Critical Component of a Scientist’s Work

That said, it’s not enough to share data and information: You must know how to communicate it and bring it into the public sphere. According to Erin, scientists are frequently of the belief that their work speaks for itself and will reach the public on its own — but it just doesn’t work that way.

“A critical component of our work as scientists is to communicate what we do and what results we find,” she says.

“That can take many forms. For example, setting up a meeting with your Congressional representative to let them know your field has reached a consensus on which variables are most important in improving the lifetime outcomes of children exposed to lead. Or consultation, where you are called upon to help lawmakers interpret the findings of the broader scientific community for the purpose of crafting legislation.”

While informing and influencing policy is vital, Erin notes that communicating to the public “has never been more important.” She adds that while the public generally views the scientific community favorably — and trusts their findings — the disconnect between scientists and the public is a large hurdle to effective communication.

One solution? Community events that give scientists the chance to talk directly with people and show them why the work matters.

“It can be more formally organized, like the Philadelphia Science Festival, or casual like talking to the other parents after a PTA meeting about what you do for work, or chatting with other churchgoers about your work over some post-service doughnuts,” says Erin.

She notes, however, that incentivizing the pursuit of this work would mean reworking the current system that rewards scientists for published papers, awarded grants, and scholarly presentations.

“Our current system of promotions, tenure, and other incentives do not recognize the vital contribution scientists make to the future of science and our country more broadly when they take the time outside the lab to build relationships with their community or elected officials — even though it is that very work which ensures funding of our scientific agencies,” says Erin. “We should consider the ways in which the work of these faculty and students can be recognized and rewarded.”

Alumni Q&A: Enrique Lin-Shiao, GR’19

Enrique Lin-Shiao, PhD, GR’19, took a long road to get to Penn — and since graduating, his journey has taken him even farther. The Costa Rican-born Dr. Lin-Shiao received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics and Master of Science in Biophysics at the Technical University of Munich in Germany before moving to the United Kingdom and then to Philadelphia, where he studied in the lab of the renowned Shelley Berger, PhD, the Daniel S. Och University Professor and Penn Integrated Knowledge Professor.

Another focus of Dr. Lin-Shiao: science communication. While at Penn, he founded the Penn Science Diplomacy Group (PSDG), which would go on to join forces with the Penn Science Policy Group (PSPG) to form the Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Group (PSPDG). The group’s focus is on providing students and other early-career scientists at Penn with the training and experience they need to be more fluent in science communication, policy, and diplomacy.

Now a postdoctoral research fellow in the Doudna Lab at UC Berkeley, Dr. Lin-Shiao is making a name for himself at the intersection of tech and genetics. In May, he was profiled by Forbes magazine for his work on employing automation to increase coronavirus testing capacity.

Though he’s obviously quite busy, Dr. Lin-Shiao talked to The Dish about his work, the path he has taken, and the importance of science communication.

What propelled you to get into medicine and biomedical science?

I started my research as an undergrad in engineering physics in the field of DNA ‘origami.’ I was fascinated by how we could use DNA as a building block and fold it into all kinds of shapes — from letters, to smileys, to boxes. This got me interested in how DNA is organized in the tiny space of the nucleus, and how this translates into function.

An internship in the UK introduced me to epigenetics for the first time, and this led to wanting to learn much more about the field and how it relates to biomedical science — which brought me to the University of Pennsylvania. The Penn Epigenetics Institute’s great faculty and their work on chromatin and genome regulation were the main reasons I decided to pursue my PhD at Penn.

As a student, you worked with Dr. Shelley Berger. Can you describe that experience? How did it prepare you for the work you’ve done since?

I came into my PhD with very little background in biology, but I knew I wanted to understand what the open biological questions were, how you define them, and how you go about trying to answer them. When I was an undergrad working in technology development using DNA origami, I had a hard time understanding how I could apply the tools I was making to answer biological questions or create treatments.

I was immediately drawn to Dr. Berger’s lab because of the wide range of biological topics the lab studies — from spermatogenesis, to aging, to cancer and neurodegeneration, and even eusocial behavior in ants. This breadth of topics really allowed me to appreciate the power of chromatin and DNA organization in influencing so many different life processes.

Dr. Berger was also a great mentor, promoting independence early on. She also helped me develop a better intuition for important questions in biology, as well as how to define projects while keeping the big picture and impact in mind. I left feeling well prepared, and those lessons have continued to help me in my current position as a postdoctoral fellow working in genome editing in the lab of Dr. Jennifer Doudna. My time in the Berger Lab equipped me with new perspectives that allow me to think about applications and important caveats as I work on developing next-generation gene editing tools.

What was your inspiration for forming the PSDG? How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of the PSPDG’s mission?

I’m the son of Taiwanese immigrants and was born and raised in Costa Rica. My scientific training has allowed me to move from Costa Rica to Germany, to the UK, and finally to the United States. This multicultural background fostered an interest in science and its role in international relations and development. Talking to other students in the biomedical sciences, I realized there were many people interested in learning more about science diplomacy, which led to the founding of PSDG.

Since then, we’ve exposed many undergraduate and graduate students to science diplomacy through seminars, symposia, collaborations with foreign universities, and direct work with embassies including Cuba, Lithuania, Sweden, the Philippines, and Costa Rica. I’m incredibly proud of what we achieved while I was there, and with the directions the group has taken under the awesome leadership of Erin K. Reagan, GR’23.

Thinking about how diplomacy can foster better science is critical in the current times. Global challenges, such as the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, do not respect human-drawn borders — and we need a joint effort to find solutions to these crises. With the efforts to develop a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, we’ve seen incredible international collaboration to develop, test, and plan logistics for deployment. I’m very optimistic that with continued collaborative work, we will be able to curb this pandemic.

I truly believe — and there are many examples for this — that science can promote better relations across countries and international collaboration can foster better science. Science provides means to allow communities to further develop and prosper; at the same time, that diversity enriches and advances science by introducing novel ways of thinking, ideas, and solutions.

Increasing diversity in STEM also is crucial to increasing trust in science, which has been eroding in recent years. We need a diverse scientific workforce so all communities are sitting at the table, voicing the unique concerns of their communities. We need to make sure no one is taken advantage of, as has been the case in the past.

You’ve also started a podcast. Can you tell us a bit about that?

I started “Caminos en Ciencia” (Pathways in Science) together with my colleague Dr. Kevin Alicea Torres in 2017, when the rhetoric around Latin American immigrants was very derogative. We wanted to reframe the narrative and highlight the great work many Latinx are doing in the United States. Additionally, we were and continue to be very aware of the lack of Latinx representation in science and know first-hand that for many people in our community, it’s hard to picture a career in science. For many, the steps to becoming a scientist are unclear, especially given the lack of representation.

In our podcast — now in its third season — we aim to give voice to the struggles, lessons, and successes of Latin American scientists from across the entire region to provide relatable role models for people interested in careers in STEM. Our episodes are in Spanish, and we cover topics from language barriers, to imposter syndrome, to dealing with biases, and even people dealing with the threat of deportation. We really hope our listeners are inspired by these stories, just as I am, and that this can lead to more people in our community charting their own pathways in science.

You made headlines in May for your efforts at UC Berkeley to utilize automation to perform coronavirus testing on a massive scale.

We are in a unique situation at UC Berkeley, where we had no med school, hospital, or clinical lab able to perform testing when the pandemic started. However, my PI and others recognized very early on that testing and contact tracing was crucial to keeping the transmission low. In only three weeks, we were able to create a CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments) diagnostics lab and start testing not only people on campus but also the wider community — including essential workers and homeless people who, until then, had no access to free and quick testing. We prepared a blueprint that was published in Nature Biotechnology describing our efforts in detail, and since then we have had calls with groups at UC Irvine, UT Austin, Penn, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica, among others, to understand how they can set up similar initiatives.

We started with a manual pipeline but developed automation that allowed us to do more than five times the amount of testing. As time has passed, we’ve also incorporated saliva and pooled testing to bring the number of tested individuals even higher. We currently have enough capacity to test people on campus two times a week and continue providing free testing to essential workers and underprivileged communities in our area.

This has been an amazing team effort, and it is truly inspiring to be part of it — and be able to have such a direct impact on our broader community during these hard times.

If you could relay a message to today’s Penn biomedical students, what would it be?

I would say graduate school is a great time to not only develop further as a scientist, but also to explore the role of science and the skills you are developing in different contexts: policy, diplomacy, consulting, public health, etc.

Penn has excellent resources to do so, from graduate groups to certificates. This complementary training and the skillsets you develop through these activities can not only better society but also make you a better scientist — so make sure to take advantage of the many resources at Penn.

Make a Difference: Give to the BGS Fellowship Fund Today

Though the circumstances we have faced this year are nothing short of extraordinary, this holiday season brings with it a sense of gratitude — appreciation for sacrifices made and perseverance demonstrated. Our students have shown unfathomable resilience, and we could not be prouder.

In support of their efforts and those of future generations of young scientists, we ask that you consider making a gift to the BGS Fellowship Fund. With the help of your gift, Penn’s BGS not only continues to ensure students are growing and thriving as scientists — both in the classroom and in their mentor labs — but also provides them with the resources they need to continue pursuing their education through this pandemic.

Please join us in supporting our BGS students. You can make a gift online or send a check payable to "The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" and include “Biomedical Graduate Studies Fellowship Fund” in the memo line. Mail it to:

Penn Medicine Development
c/o Megan Osvath
3535 Market Street, Suite 750
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Thank you for your partnership.